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[Music]

Male Voice: We’re here at (unintelligible) with the Sea Cadets on a week’s voyage.

Male Voice: Six young people, er, Cadets, that have come from all over the place; Northern Ireland, Ramsgate, Fishguard. We’re just taking them out for a bit of sail training and…learn to sail really.

Male Voice: On the offshore vessels, you meet lifelong friends. You do know them for a very long time, you don’t grow apart, you’re always sort of chatting, just on social media or texting or something. And on the week, you have a great fun, there’s a great bonding that goes on.

Male Voice: Everyone can sit on the side of the boat, legs over, [unintelligible] and it’s all going right, and everything is just going right.

Male Voice: I’ve actually slept in the boat, it’s quite good fun.

Male Voice: I was a bit scared first but, like, everyone’s friendly.

Male Voice: It also gives you a bit of confidence in normal life, it’s a really good environment just to like get good skills, like working with people, team communication.

Male: Quite a lot of the idea of sail training it to just to help improve them as people, help them work together as a team. It’s a voyage of discovery.

Male Voice: The staff are great, they’re, erm, friendly, nice, cheerful, good to be around. They’re great instructors. And if you do anything wrong, they’ll let you know, but they won’t shout at you, they’ll just help you and let you learn.

Female Voice: It all to do with team work and working together and getting the timings right. It builds up your confidence, you meet new friends, new people. Yeah, it’s really good.

Male Voice: From the yachts and from anything in sea cadets, everything we get, it’s equivalent to the RYA qualification, which carries through the entire world really.

Male Voice: The skills that we learn here, I’ll keep for life, I won’t forget them. It’s something I’ve always wanted to do is sail, so we’re doing it and the Sea Cadets is how we get excited and learn to do everything.

Male Voice: It’s like all just living together and it’s just good fun really.

Male Voice: I think everybody starts off a newbie. So, you go, you start, you make friends. Nobody’s going to shout at you, ball at you, you just got to learn and once you’ve learned, you can really enjoy it.

Male Voice: Don’t think. Just do it.

Male Voice: I wouldn’t just hide from it cuz it’s…you’re missing out.

Male Voice: They’ll see each other as heroes.

Male Voice: [Laughing] Fantastic.

[Music]

Female Voice: Every time I get on the water, it’s exciting to see what’s gonna to happen.

Male Voice: They will all give it a go and come out of the other side, just absolutely overwhelmed with what they’ve managed to put themselves through.

Female Voice: I feel better about myself, so that it makes me just happy in general.

Female Voice: Because you’re able to pick up various different skills and transfer them in your school work, within your social life and just be able to go out and learn things that you probably wouldn’t learn anywhere else.

Male Voice: When they teach you respect, it makes you learn in different ways and different environments.

Female Voice: Something that I can look forward to every weekend.

Male Voice: They are very good teachers. They push you but not to your limits; they push you so that you learn better and more effectively.

Female Voice: When I came to Sea Cadets, my confidence increased more than ever.

Female Voice: I joined here quite recently, and I just really enjoy it. It’s not like, erm, sports you do at school.

Female Voice: And you make friends very quickly.

Male Voice: It’s just I enjoy being out on the water, there’s nothing else to it really.

Male Voice: What’s really great is to see in the first few weeks they might be really nervous, they might lack confidence, erm, some of them might not have English as their first language, and actually this is quite a challenging thing for them to do. But what’s great is as the weeks progress, is they keep coming back, is that they improve, they grow in confidence, and erm, they’re having a great time

Male Voice: It made us feel that were here to actually do something to benefit them, which is really nice.

Male Voice: We’ve only really spent a short time together, but we bond straight away. We kinda have to bond straight away, to work as a team, and to set sail and make the ship move. [Laughs]

Female Voice: Er, yeah, pride is, like, another main word I use, and I probably use it quite a lot, just for my family and also my friends. And I tell them I’m going on some Cadet thing and they’re like ‘that’s amazing’, and I feel so proud and happy about it, like ‘yeah, I’m at Cadets’. [Laughs]

Male Voice: Coming out into the open, meeting new people, bonding with them. Yeah, having a week away, you’re kinda like a family together.

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Sea Cadets

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